Devotional thought composed for TSA Devotional Book, September 2015.
Read Philippians 2:5-11
Is Jesus God? Yes.
Like
every Christian, I affirm that Jesus is God. This is a non-negotiable in
Christianity and it is an important question. If you go to a church or have
someone show up at your door talking about religion, I encourage you to ask her
this very question: Is Jesus God? Simply put, if the person cannot answer with
an unequivocal yes, then she is not a Christian.
Jesus
Christ is ‘truly and properly God’ (TSA d.4). ‘He was with God in the
beginning. Through him all things were made’ (John 1:2-3). The character and
being of God were fully present in the life of the man Jesus, for ‘He who has
seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14: 9). In the Gospel of John we read that
‘the Word became flesh and lived for a while among us’ (John 1:14). In
Philippians, Paul expresses this truth when he describes Christ as ‘being in
very nature God’, and yet ‘taking the very nature of a servant’ (Philippians 2:
6-7). In Hebrews, Jesus Christ is referred to as ‘the radiance of God’s glory
and exact representation of his being’ (Hebrews 1:3). At the Council of
Chalcedon in 451, a statement was formulated which embraced the twin truths
that Jesus Christ is one integrated person, with a divine and a human nature,
‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation . . .
at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man’
(from the Chalcedonian Definition). In the person of Jesus we see humanity
fully open to divine grace and we see God revealed to us. (Salvation Story:
Salvationists Handbook of Doctrine, pp 37-38).
Jesus
is God and as Jesus died and returned to life, he is the Lord of both the
living and the dead and sooner or later every knee will bow and every tongue
will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Romans 14:9-11, cf. Isaiah 45:23) for
'Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven
given to men by which we must be saved' (Acts 4:12).
So
then as Jesus is God, the question for us today is will we serve Him both now
and forever in His Kingdom to come?
[1] Based on the article by Captain Michael Ramsay, Is Jesus God? Nipawin
Journal (28 May 2008) On-line: http://sheepspeak.com/sasknews.htm#G_d Is Jesus
God?
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